True Religion at the Parliament of World Religions – Not What you Think

Now that I’ve seen people shouted down, I’m certainly not speaking up. 

“There is one true religion. . . . “ It is a phrase I heard a hundred times if I’ve heard it once at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Now if that phrase were followed by “It is Islam” or “It is Christianity” or “It is Buddhism” or “It is Hinduism” then saying it here among the pluralists would be greeted with the utmost derision. You would get booed out of the room.

And yet if you make this announcement on behalf of spirituality and tolerance, social justice and self-realization, gender equality and care of creation, pluralism itself or some other “progressive” ideal you’ll get a standing ovation. As have several speakers here who made just those assertions, from Tariq Ramadan (“the only true religion is spirituality undivided from social engagement”) to Al Gore and his pluralist reading of the Bible.

And that is a problem. Because this kind of assertion: “The true religion is _______________” is intellectually untenable, sociologically bogus, and ultimately destructive of real inter-religious dialogue. It is a statement based on the arrogant assumption that one person, or even a whole Parliament of World’s Religions can know the truth about something like religion. And can know that truth without seriously consulting any significant portion of interested parties among human persons.

If it presumes to speak on behalf of God then it is arrogance shading over into insanity.

I do understand the motivational value of the assertion. It both creates a sense of commonality among people of many different religions, and it rallies them in support of values that very few of us would either dismiss or contest. It is activist propaganda rather than a theological claim.

Yet even so, any one of these ideals or combination of them in the context of the claim to be the true religion is highly exclusionary. Because there are religious people who believe in tolerance, but not self-realization. There are religions that cultivate one form of spirituality but not another – and there are those that reject the term altogether. There are religions in which social justice demands inequality in at least some realms. And of course there are real religions and religious people who cannot get on board with religious pluralism at all.

Even if you say there is no true religion you will have excluded those who think that there is.

And exclusion is the key word here. Because the claims at the Parliament that “the one true religion is. . . .” do exclude. As formulated in the plenary sessions at the parliament they  exclude conservative Christians, many forms of Jewish Zionist, conservative Muslims, traditional Hindus, Buddhist Nationalists, and indeed all religious people who aren’t on board with the social action agenda of the Parliament organizers.

These excluded religious people become the pariahs whose presence beyond the boundaries of our one true religion solidify our identity. Having “othered” them, to use the common term, we progressive pluralists know better who we are.

But that just covers up the dirty, and largely hidden secret of the true religion fest of the Parliament: among those here proclaiming the true religion there are many whose claims to truth are mutually exclusive. Half a dozen, for example, are built around the idea that a particular individual is the last true prophet of God and that this “Final” religion of their particular prophet alone comprehends all religious truth.

And many of the religions here are as far from accepting the gender equality so frequently asserted as being part of the “one true religion” as earth is from the sun.

There are religions for whom the the highest religious ideal is a state of contemplation infinitely removed from the kind of vigorous social action that is promoted as the “one true religion.” And there are others for whom the heart of religion is a ritual, such as the mass, while social action is an adjunct. There are many here who believe that social activism is the heart of the one true religion, and others who leave off praying and the cloister only to come here and promote a life devoted to prayer.

We at the Parliament of the World’s Religion have achieved a kind of unity – but it has been purchased at the expense of individual integrity, or at least forcing those who aren’t on board with some aspect of true religion keeping quiet. Because now that I’ve seen people shouted down I’m certainly not speaking up. Now that I’ve seen the ovation for statements I find questionable, or overly-simplistic I’m not going to question, or complicate. Who wants to fight the collective voice of 10,000 parliamentarians applauding, or even a couple of dozen?

And of course those unwilling to play the role of pariah are not here. Which I would guess is more than half the religious world.